it is an import / export connection Plugin for Rhino and CINEMA 4D. Its target is to provide an as easy as possible and smooth work flow between these 2 applications ( it is recommended you have both apps for best workflow, to have c4d is mandatory). As there are no real NURBS objects or tools available within Cinema4d, with this connection Rhino can act as high end “NURBS modeling plugin” for the CINEMA 4D platform. Any Rhino geometry can be directly opened in CINEMA 4D. They get translated into native, perfectly smooth CINEMA 4D Polygon Objects, which render exactly as they would direct in Rhino.

Detailed feature list of rhino.io:

Rhino NURBS Objects are automatically translated into native, ready to render CINEMA 4D Polygon objects. They use the internal Rhino so called render meshes, which Rhino uses for rendering and stores in each file ones it got shown with OpenGL in view port or rendered. As normal tags store the original NURBS curvature data, they render perfectly smooth in CINEMA 4D.

Meshes from Rhino, generated from custom tessellation, native mesh objects, grasshopper, paneling tools or imported from any other 3rdparty application are being transported into native, ready to render CINEMA 4D Polygon objects.

any lights set in Rhino will be translated into equivalent CINEMA 4D lights. they can be used further on for visualization with AR, VRAYforC4D, Maxwell, etc

Rhino.io imports and translates also poly lines and even NURBS splines. the NURBS splines get auto tessellated on import, as CINEMA 4D has no real NURBS splines. they can be used for further modeling, or as construction help lines.

Rhino “saved views” / Cameras are also imported. you get the exact same views in CINEMA 4D. not only the active Camera is imported but also all saved views stored in the rhino .3dm file. They come in as native CINEMA 4D Camera Objects (they work also with the VRAY Physical camera tag).

Layers & Groups are a very important part of Rhino modeling. Rhino.io imports all Rhino layers & groups, also the nested structures. You can choose if you want to import hidden layers or not. also hide and lock status is translated into CINEMA 4D. You can choose if you want to import the layers as native CINEMA 4D layers, or if you want to import them as groups into Object manager ( both can be very handy and useful).

If you use Rhino Blocks, or if you import an Autocad file via Rhino, rhino.io will also import the blocks correctly, automatically translating them into native CINEMA 4D Instances. this enables new work flow possibilities in combination of Rhino and C4D, the use of blocks becomes a very useful work flow through that feature.

One important aspect, is the update feature: if you have already imported the 3dm file once, and if you change something in Rhino. you can update the file in CINEMA 4D, without the need to load the file new. simply use the merge command, and rhino.io will automatically detect the updated parts and only import them.all materials that have been applied, and no work or changes that have already be done in CINEMA 4D will be lost.

Rhino Layer colors are optionally also imported. this can be specially very useful if you import the Rhino layers as Groups. The layer color will be a material tag added to the corresponding layer group. this can be a very fast and efficient work flow for visualization

in Rhino you have the possibility to set a custom per object render mesh attribute. rhino.io is able to read this special Object properly and use it for the CINEMA 4D import. int hat way you can easily apply custom tessellation settings to a rhino object without the need to actually tessellate it into a mesh before export. rhino.io will do for you.

objects, splines, cameras, layers etc can be also exported back from CINEMA 4D to Rhino. this is useful when you have a geometry in CINEMA 4D, and you want to add details or special geometry in Rhino. Rhino.io lets you directly save a 3dm file our of CINEMA 4D.